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Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gestures during a press conference in Jerusalem, Apr. 7, 2010. He says his government has not yet worked out its differences with the U.S. over Israeli construction in disputed east Jerusalem.AP Photo

"Breaking the Middle East Impasse: How it Might Happen"

"Negotiations in the Middle East are at an impasse. What two former Israeli Prime Ministers have recognized — that there can be no settlement in the Middle East as long as Israel claims all of Jerusalem — has been rejected by Benjamin Netanyahu and his rightist cohort. Offers by Ehud Barak to Yasir Arafat, and later by Ehud Olmert to Mahmoud Abbas, of a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem (both of which were declined), have now been taken off the table by Netanyahu. This is the impasse that has been created by Netanyahu's exclusion of East Jerusalem — captured by the Israelis in the 1967 war — in any settlement freeze. And the Palestinians on their part will not enter into "indirect" negotiations — with George Mitchell as the go-between — as long as all settlements are not frozen...."

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